This is the tale that began in 2006 in my first year of beekeeping in Atlanta, GA. ...there's still so much to learn.

Welcome - Explore my Blog

I've been keeping this blog for nine years and I began my 10th year of beekeeping in April 2015. Now there are about 1250posts on this blog. . Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

Even if you find one post on the subject, I've posted a lot on basic beekeeping skills like installing bees, harvesting honey, inspecting the hive, etc. so be sure to search for more once you've found a topic of interest to you. And watch the useful videos and slide showson the sidebar. All of them have captions. Please share posts of interest via Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here. Along the way, I've passed a number of certification levels and am now a! Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Bees: A Little of This, A Little of That

Yesterday I inspected all the hives at home. Finding lots of little tidbits of interest, I decided to post a hodge-podge of them, so here goes:

I saw a perfectly lovely queen in SOS2. She was gliding slowly, unfazed by my arrival in the hive, over her creations and paused so that I could take her photo. Isn't she pretty - I love the golden queens that my bees often raise.

It has (finally) begun to rain in Atlanta - we've now had several days of it. My garden is green, and the nectar flow may get a last hurrah with the extra push of moisture from the universe. Below you can see my water source. It's a plant saucer sitting on an upturned pot. Inside that plant saucer is another one filled with rocks so that the bees have somewhere to light while taking in the water.

I fall in love with the bees all over again every time I pull a foundationless frame and find that they are creating comb.

Remember the frames that have stood around untouched until the nectar flow began to diminish? There have been bees all over them for the past few days and now every cell has been ripped open and all the honey robbed out.

The shards of wax cappings on the ground attest to the robbery. That is a way that you can tell if your hive has been robbed. In a working hive, the bees are quite conservative with the wax - they reuse the caps of the brood cells, they move wax from one place to the next. But in a robbery, the bees are not invested and tear the cappings off, dropping them wherever they may fall.

Early in my beekeeping, when I was still using sheets of wax foundation, I put a box of wax foundation frames as a new super on the hive . Later that day, I stood by the hive and could hear a definite crunching sound. I even posted on Beemaster about it because it was such a strange sound. I came to discover that the bees were chewing the wax out of the new frames and taking it to a place in the hive where it was needed!

Imagine hearing crunching coming from your hive!

My bees in these hives have really been collecting nectar. They've built some pretty fat honey comb as you can see in the photo below.

I'm off to Young Harris tomorrow night and will be teaching "Low Tech Beekeeping" there on Friday afternoon at 1 and at 2 in room 106. If you are there, be sure to speak to me and introduce yourself as someone who reads this blog.

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Linda in her beesuit

New Atlanta Beekeeping Meetup Group

The third meeting of Atlanta Beekeeping Naturally is Thursday, August 13 from 6:30 - 7:45 at the 11Alive conference room at One Monroe Dr. in Atlanta (30324). In July we talked about small hive beetles. Members requested that the August discussion be on healthy wax, so that's our subject for the meeting!

Want to talk bees with like-minded beekeepers who want to discuss things about bees?

It's hard in a bee meeting to have time to discuss interesting topics because the speaker takes all the time. We thought it would be great to have a group to encourage discussion about beekeeping as naturally as possible. We plan to meet once a month.

For now we are meeting the second Thursday of the month . We'd love it if you joined us for interesting discussions about keeping bees in the many ways that people do. Click here to find our Meetup group page: Atlanta Beekeeping the Natural Way.

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Great Quote from Richard Taylor, beekeeper and writer

"There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention." --The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping, Richard Taylor

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Since I added this counter in May 2009, visitors have come to this site from 201 countries - the most recent being Guinea! The top four countries from which visitors come are the US, Great Britain, Canada, and Turkey.

Thanks for stopping by

Thanks for visiting my blog and following my beekeeping adventure!

This site is listed on many websites across the country as a good site for beginners to visit. Blogger tells me that there are over 1170 posts on this blog for you to explore. There are slide shows and videos on the sidebar addressing beekeeping challenges like harvesting, solar wax melters, and doing hive inspections.

I may have already addressed a bee issue which is on your mind. The search feature will send you to the most recent post on a subject. Be sure to keep looking because I've posted a lot on many issues. Use the Google search feature on this page will help you search this site to find posts dealing with your question.

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